A man is on trial for murder. There is absolutely no physical evidence against him, however the prosecution does have the eyewitness testimony of several very credible witnesses (A Priest, a police Chief, whoever you consider to be credible), an excellent motive and some pretty convincing circumstantial evidence (he would have benefitted from the death, he had no alibi, he was overheard making threats to the victim, stuff like that) so they decide to take it to court. Every eyewitness is 100% reliable and 100% certain that they saw this man commit a murder.
Now, here’s the twist.
This guy has an identical twin. As part of a demonstration the defence lawyer stands the two men next to eachother and none of the witnesses can tell them apart.
My question is that if it is undeniable that one of them did it, but there is no way to tell which, what happens next? Is there a proceedure for dealing with this sort of thing?
A similar conundrum is posed in one of my favorite mystery novels, namely Ellery Queen’s The Finishing Stroke. Unfortunately, I’d rather not discuss the solution here in case anyone wants to read it for themselves. I will say that it involved intense digging for physical evidence that was eventually found. Twins are rarely, if ever, perfectly identical, and through the course of their lives they acquire scars and such.
As for the ultimate question in the OP, I suppose if it could not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a specific person did it, that person would be acquitted. It wouldn’t be the first time that a murderer had beat the rap.